Commuters say HOT lanes causing more problems, not curing them

The State Roads and Tollway Authority announced 3,217 registered motorists used the Interstate 85 HOT lanes during the moing and afteoon rush hours on Monday.  They could not say what the usual volume of cars is on that interstate during a normal rush hour commute.

Monday was the first workday the new HOT lanes were in full effect.  The lanes use a sliding scale based on traffic volume and distance to determine how much a commuter will pay to use them.

 "I mean, the highway is just cluttered now.  It's crazy," Gwinnett County resident Dexter Walker told Channel Two's Richard Elliot.  "I mean, I-85 is usually wide open, but now it's just packed, so I take the back roads."

"I think it's made it noticeably worse," said Mike Kotula, who lives and works along the I-85 corridor.  "It doesn't make sense to me.  You're taking a perfectly functioning lane away from a roadway?"

SRTA spokeswoman Malika Wilkins is urging patience.

"What I can say to that is that we're like a day and a half in, so we can't make any sort of determination about anything," Wilkins told Elliot.  "We're really way early to talk about success or failure or anything."

Wilkins said that in the eight other U.S. cities that use HOT lanes, there was a "steep ramp-up in the beginning."  She believes there is a sort of leaing curve and as motorists lea about and begin to feel more comfortable with the HOT lanes, traffic congestion will stabilize.

"In those first few weeks and months, there's a very steep ramp-up until it starts steadily increasing," said Wilkins.  "So we're looking at least a few months before we actually start seeing some stable customer traffic behavior in those lanes."

Channel Two asked about the toll revenue collected on the first full day of the HOT lane, but SRTA said those numbers were not yet available.